Irina Sokolova

This bleak late soviet-era drama follows the career of Malyanov (Alexei Ananishov), a young medical school graduate who has been sent to work in Turkmenia, which is on the Caspian Sea. Here he runs into a hodge-podge of people of differing ethnicities, all of them victims of the government's earlier mania. (MSN Movies)

A young wife collapses to the kitchen floor and dies from a heart attack. Husband is confused until he finds out there exists a lover he never guess about.

The action in this lavishly produced film takes place at an oddly ark-shaped mansion during World War I. A large group of family and friends have gathered at this country house to dance, drink, and converse. Their conversation, in particular, is adorned with erudite literary references and quotations. Despite their apparent refinement, their preoccupations are simple: sex and violence. Disquieting images break the tranquility of the vacationers' inappropriate idyll. (allmovie.com)

In Moscow, in the autumn of 1993, a strike has broken out. Marina and her daughter Olga have found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. Six years later, Olga is worried about her mother's declining mental state and decides to invite her to Germany to have her treated. Olga's mother, however, cannot shake the memory of her husband, who died during the strike.